BAGHDAD: Iraqi Shia militias have drawn up hit lists of suspected Sunni insurgents to be kidnapped, executed and hung in public, security and police officials said, raising the stakes in a sectarian war tearing the country apart.
The militias became a vital line of defence for the Shia-led government after the army collapsed in the face of a June advance by Sunni Islamic State militants who seized large swathes of land in the north and aim to march on Baghdad. The militias’ increasingly ruthless tactics, in towns north of the capital, near the front line with insurgents, could radicalise Sunnis who say innocent people are being swept up in the fighting.
“They have a hit list of Sunni individuals that are considered a threat to security forces and the Shia population,” said a senior security official in Diyala Province who works with the militias.
“Every one on the list should be eliminated to clear the province of groups supporting the Islamic State.” While the militias say they are removing a threat from terrorists, critics accuse them of pushing Iraq into a sectarian abyss. Shia militias are also helping security forces fight Sunni militants who have taken control of parts of Western Iraq.
Iraq’s ongoing conflict rivals the worst of the last decade’s sectarian war, posing the greatest risk to the OPEC member’s stability since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Events in Baquba, an ethnically mixed town 65km northeast of Baghdad, this week illustrate the methods the militias are adopting to discourage Sunnis from joining Islamic State, which believes Shias are apostates who deserve to die. Basim Amir Al Jubouri left home on July 20 to run his small food shop.
He was kidnapped en route by Shia militia forces. Jubouri’s body was hung from an electricity pole in a public square in Baquba on Wednesday, along with 14 others, a warning to anyone with sympathies for
Islamic State.
REUTERS
